


When Memories Fade

by purple_angel



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Post Season Six of Game of Thrones, F/M, Heavy Angst, Jealousy, Married Life, Memory Loss, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-04 20:08:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11562417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_angel/pseuds/purple_angel
Summary: After the War for the Dawn has come to an end and humanity stands victorious, Jon and Sansa live a happy life in Winterfell as King and Queen in the North, surrounded by their loved ones, until one day, a horrible accident makes the perfect world they've created around them crumble.





	1. Jon

“Your Grace?” someone yelled, as hurried steps could be heard approaching the solar from the open door. Jon had been stuck in the room, discussing matters of the kingdom with Davos, who was his hand, for what seemed to be hours, and the moment he was called, he didn’t know whether to feel relieved by the distraction or not. When he locked eyes with the man calling him, however, and the three frightened looking soldiers following right behind him, he immediately knew that something was terribly wrong.

“What happened?” he asked, while his heart started beating wildly inside his chest, dropping carelessly the papers he was holding in his hands on the table in front of him. The man that had spoken earlier looked almost terrified to reply. “Tell me,” Jon ordered him, losing his patience.

“Her Grace…the Queen—” the man started to answer, but before he had a chance to say anything more, Jon was running out of the room and towards the Lord’s chambers.

Barging into the room, he saw Sansa’s handmaidens crying, while Sam, with the help of two of Winterfell’s soldiers, was laying his unconscious wife on their bed. At first, the natural red of her hair prevented him from seeing it, but soon he realized there was blood running from her head.

“What in seven hells happened to her, Sam?” he yelled frantically, as he ran to her side. Sam looked taken aback by his presence there and jumped a little from the tone of his voice.

“There was an ambush, your Grace,” one of the two men who was helping Sam answered instead of him, while Sam started tending to the wound on her head, desperately trying to stop the bleeding. “Her Grace was riding as per usual outside the walls with Lady Brienne, us and two other guards, when arrows started flying towards us out of nowhere. No arrow hit the target, but her horse was injured and dropped her forcefully to the ground, where she hit her head on a rock.

“Who the hell was it? Did you catch them?” Jon yelled furiously.

“No, your Grace. They got away and we barely saw them. The three others who were with us got seriously injured and when the ones who attacked us saw her Grace falling to the ground, they ran away on their horses. We have sent people after them, but we had to return back to Winterfell to help save her Grace and the rest.”

Jon had no idea when it had started happening, but there were tears running down his face as he stood next to the bed, holding Sansa’s ice cold hand in his, while Sam kept working on her head.

“Sam, how is she?” he asked his friend and Winterfell’s Maester through tears. “Is she going to be alright? She’s not going to die, is she?” he asked again, bringing her hand to his lips, after kneeling on the floor next to her.

“She hit her head hard, so I can’t really tell with certainty. The next hours will be crucial. The blood is slowly stopping to run from the wound, so that’s good, but she has yet to wake up for us to see how she’s responding—” Sam said carefully, while still tending to his wife. “ _If_ she wakes up,” he added hesitantly, without meeting his eyes, and everyone fell silent again.

“Papa?” the voice of his two year old son suddenly pierced the silence, getting everyone’s attention who looked towards the entrance of the room.

“Robb?” Jon called his name, as he turned to look at the boy standing by the door. Robb was his spitting image, from his dark curls and brown eyes to the shape of his nose and pouty lips. It was as if Sansa had left nothing of herself on their son, although she always claimed she loved the fact that Robb looked just like him. And he could understand what she meant by that, because before their son had been born yet, Jon had wished for a little girl with auburn hair and blue eyes. When he had finally held Robb in his arms, however, who was named after their late brother, it had been his proudest moment. Both he and Sansa couldn’t believe how they could have possibly created this perfect being.

“Sleepy Mama?” the boy asked, looking from him to the bed where Sansa was lying. Jon, giving one last kiss on her hand, wiped his tears and then got up and walked to him, crouching down to his level.

“Yes, Mama is sleeping, my love. She’s tired,” he told him, taking him into his arms, as he stood back up.

“Where is your aunt? Where is Arya? I thought you were with her,” he asked him then, kissing him repeatedly on his soft hair, trying not to collapse in front of his boy. He needed to be strong for him. Robb couldn’t know the seriousness of the situation.

“Awya stuped. Mama. Mine Mama. Get Mama,” Robb started throwing a fit in his arms, while fat tears started forming in his eyes that were identical to Jon’s.

“Robb, I told you Mama is resting. You’ll see her later.”

“NO! Wan Mama! Mamaaa…” Robb shouted at him and then started sobbing uncontrollably, while hitting Jon’s chest with his tiny fists. Everyone around them, although they were trying to hide it, was looking at them with pity in their eyes.

“Hush, my love,” Jon kept saying, trying to soothe him to no avail. He was in one of his moods again, and whenever that happened Sansa was the only one who could help him calm down.

“Maaamaaa…” Robb kept screaming with heart-wrenching sobs, but before Jon could lose his patience, Arya appeared at the door.

“Jon, I’m so sorry! He ran away,” Arya said before she noticed the other people inside the room.

“What happened?” she asked and her voice sounded accusatory. Jon knew that tone. She was tired. They were finally doing alright. And now another tragedy had come their way. Arya had had enough and she was mad at the Gods.

“Arya, please take Robb. I can’t talk right now,” he begged her, while Robb kept wailing in his arms.

“Maaammaa… Wan Maaamaa…”

“Of course,” she answered, sparing one worried look towards the bed where Sansa lay, and then taking him into her arms.

After they were gone, and after going back to Sansa’s side, Jon could still hear the boy crying for a long time, until the numbness from the pain in his heart blocked out every sound but her shallow breathing. Sansa had to come back to them. Robb couldn’t bear to lose his mother and neither could Jon. He had thought that after all the death he had seen he should be able to accept it more easily, but Sansa was the light of his life, and he knew that if he were to lose her, he couldn’t survive, even if it was for the sake of his son.

 _Father…, Robb…, Rickon… Please don’t take her from me. I’m not ready to lose her. Please,_ he thought, begging the loved ones that had passed away to give them another chance. He wasn’t ready to let her join them. He would never be.


	2. Sansa

Sansa woke up from a deep, dreamless sleep, slowly becoming aware of the throbbing pain inside her head that would not let her open her eyes yet. After some time passed, however, and she was conscious enough, she felt disoriented, and for the life of her could not recall how she had gotten to her bed, because the last thing she could remember was playing with Lady in Winterfell’s courtyard. It was the next thing she became aware of, though, that confused and terrified her the most.

She still had her eyes closed, but she could feel someone holding her hand, while they lay in the bed next to her, and from the feeling of her hand inside theirs, she knew that this person wasn’t her mother. It was a man’s hand that was grasping her own, bigger than her mother’s delicate ones and it was callused with hardened skin. Had something happened to her? Why was she lying in her bed with a man? She must have taken ill and someone was looking after her, she then thought, and immediately her father’s face came into her mind, with his hardened from sword-fighting hands. When she opened her eyes, however, and turned her face to look at them, with a bit of confusion she realized that it wasn’t Ned Stark’s face that she saw, but her half-brother’s, while he was sleeping peacefully beside her.

“Jon Snow?” she shrieked—her voice sounding strange to her ears, probably due to sleep—quickly pulling her hand out of his. The noise and the sudden movement on the bed caused Jon Snow’s eyes to fly open then, while Sansa held her head in her hands, fighting the pain that had suddenly intensified.

“My love? You’re awake?” her half-brother asked with disbelief and looked excited, as he reached for her. But Sansa only glared at him through her pain filled eyes and pushed him away from her and backwards on the bed.

“Are you insane? What are you doing in my bed?” she asked furiously, before finally his words registered in her mind. ‘ _His love?_ How could he dare call her that?’ Sansa asked herself, before his confused and pained face came into focus. There was no doubt that it was Jon Snow, but she could now see how different he actually was from the last time she had seen him. To her surprise and confusion, her half-brother looked several years older and a beard was covering part of his face. This was not the boy she knew and remembered. Jon looked like a man.

“What is happening?” she asked then no one in particular, while she felt her heart pounding in her chest and started looking frantically around her. Jon cowardly approached her again then, taking her into his arms, while she stared disbelievingly at everything around her.

“This is Mother and Father’s room. What are we doing here? Where is Mother?” she asked him, and she felt him tense around her.

“Guards,” he yelled then, confusing her even more. They had never had guards guarding their bedchambers, so she wasn’t sure what Jon Snow was trying to accomplish by calling them. There was no way one of the guards would hear him, and although she wanted to tell him that, she felt too exhausted to contradict him, and instead found herself allowing him to hold her limp weight against his body, even though her head was screaming at her to get away from him. Nevertheless, she soon found that she was starting to forget what had caused her distress just a moment ago, and she let herself relax even more in his arms.

A while later the chamber’s door was opened, and two guards appeared, staring at them.

“Get Sam. She’s awake, but something’s wrong,” Jon Snow told them, before she felt him place a kiss on her head, and the two men fled the room. It was apparently the middle of the night, so she couldn’t hear anyone else moving about Winterfell, and immediately she wondered where the rest of their family was, as well as who this Sam her half-brother had asked for was.

“Jon Snow—” she started to say, but her half-brother only advised her to calm down and save her strength, all the while holding her tightly against his body. Sansa could not remember ever being in Jon Snow’s embrace before, but the feeling of his arms wrapped around her and his smell were both comforting and familiar, so she let him hold her and didn’t protest anymore, and before long she heard footsteps approaching again.

“I’m here. What has happened? Is she feeling dizzy?” a man’s voice she did not recognize said, before she felt his hand on her back.

“My Queen,” she heard him say next. Sansa cuddled closer to Jon Snow, afraid of this newcomer, and felt her half-brother responding to it, by letting her hide in the crook of his neck.

“Sam, I think she’s confused. She started asking for her mother and calling me Jon Snow. She tried to push me out of the bed,” her half-brother explained, confusing her even more. What did he mean by that? Why would it be weird for her to ask for her mother?

“My Queen,” the man, who Sansa realized was called Sam, spoke again, but she didn’t understand to whom he was referring to, because she knew for a fact that she was not a queen. She had yet to meet the royal family, and Father had told her they’d be in Winterfell in less than a fortnight.

“Your Grace?” Sam called again, as he touched her shoulder.

“Sansa?” Jon Snow said her name then, and Sansa found herself cowardly leaving the hiding spot between his neck and shoulder, embarrassingly locking eyes with her half-brother, who was looking at her with a great amount of concern on his face, before she slowly turned to look at Sam.

“My lady, are you feeling well? Does anything hurt?” Sam asked her then, after probably exchanging a look with Jon Snow. She could no longer see her half-brother’s face, so she didn’t know what he was doing.

“My head hurts,” she answered truthfully, before her eyes fell on the man’s clothes and the chain around his neck.

“You’re a Maester. Where’s Maester Luwin?” she asked him then, an unsettling feeling creeping up her chest. She saw him looking once more towards Jon Snow, but then he met her eyes again.

“Do you know who I am? Do you remember me?” Sansa thought for a moment, but then shook her head negatively.

“I just know your name is Sam. I’ve never seen you before,” she told him, and immediately felt Jon Snow shiver around her. The Maester didn’t miss her bastard brother’s reaction either and looked at him apologetically for some reason.

“Lady Sansa…” he started saying, but hesitated. “What is the last thing you remember?” Sam asked her then.

“I… I was in the courtyard, playing with Lady, my direwolf,” she explained and heard Jon Snow curse the gods with pain in his voice, as he withdrew his arms from her body.

“And what else do you remember from that day?” Sam asked her. He seemed to be a nice person. She didn’t know why she had been so afraid of him before and had looked for refuge in Jon Snow’s arms.

“The usual. Just everyone running about the castle to prepare for King Robert and the royal family’s arrival,” she said and heard her half-brother whimper behind her, and surely enough, when she turned to look at him again, he was crying.

“Half-brother? Why are you crying?” it felt odd even to her ears to call him that while he was just now hugging her, and also while they were on their parents’ bed, and she didn’t miss the pain that flashed in his eyes when he heard her say it. He never really liked it when she called him that anyway, but in time she thought he had accepted it. Sometimes it pained her too, but Jon was a bastard and she couldn’t hurt her lady mother by associating with him and treating him like her true brother.

“Perhaps you need some more sleep, my lady,” Sam suggested, sparing concerned looks towards her half-brother.

“No, I want to see Mother. It’s only my head that hurts a little. I’ll be fine,” she said, refusing him, while Jon Snow kept crying silently behind his hands. He was no longer touching her anywhere.

“What is the matter? Why is he crying and where is everyone? Why was he looking after me? That’s why he was sleeping beside me, is it not?” she asked looking from Sam to Jon and back again.

“My lady… you had an accident and you’ve been sleeping for almost a month now.”

“So, that’s why I’m starving and Jon was here.”

“Certainly! Your brothers and sister have taken turns looking after you, while you’ve been sleeping. They were really worried about you and that’s why Jon is crying. He’s just overwhelmed as we all are,” Sam said and Sansa found herself smiling at him, before she looked at Jon.

“Thank you, Jon,” she told him, not wanting to insult him again by calling him half-brother, and then hugged him. It was strange that her mother had allowed him to look after her, but she was thankful all the same, and when she wrapped her arms around him, Jon Snow returned the hug, his body still trembling from crying.

“It’s the middle of the night, but if you’re hungry, we can tell the cooks to make you some soup. You shouldn’t eat much after eating almost nothing for so many days. We were giving you water and honey, but that was it.”

“What about Mother and Father? Where are _they_?” she asked. Sam looked uncomfortable again, like he was about to lie about something. His and Jon Snow’s behavior had been suspicious from the start to say the least.

“What are you hiding from me? Where is everyone and why does Jon look like that? He looks older somehow and he has a beard. Since when do you have a beard?” She asked Jon in an accusatory tone. Jon just stared at her for a while, not saying anything, while still having tears in his eyes, and when he tried to finally speak, the sound of a crying child or babe got Sansa’s attention.

“Who’s crying? Is that Rickon?” she asked. They had no babes inside the castle as far as she knew, and she didn’t know of any servant girls that had been pregnant with child either. Only Rickon remained as a possibility.

“Why is Rickon crying? Could someone check on him? What if he had a nightmare?” she asked, and started getting up, before both Jon and Sam held her down on the bed.

“Please relax. I’ll go check on him myself. You’re not strong enough to get up yet,” Jon told her, and Sansa reluctantly obeyed.

“I’ll tell the cooks to make you some soup, my lady,” Sam added and Sansa nodded again. She was fast becoming sleepy again and when her head touched the pillow, she barely kept her eyes open for enough time to see Jon Snow leaving the room in search of their little brother. The darkness that enveloped her was bliss.


End file.
